“We are going to fight like crazy to get that trooper position back.” – State Sen. Dennis Egan, in a front-page story in the Chilkat Valley News, Jan. 19, 2017 Did Dennis Egan really fight like crazy to restore the Haines state trooper position eliminated in December 2016 by a trooper bureaucrat? Maybe, maybe not. But a better question is:…
The Haines Borough is discussing options for public safety outside the townsite in response to the elimination of Alaska State Trooper (blue-shirt) service in January, 2017. (The troopers have maintained Haines wildlife trooper Trent Chwialkowski, who responds to local crimes as his time allows). The borough’s options include lobbying candidates for state office for resumption of blue-shirt trooper service, pursuing…
Preventing littering and providing public safety outside the Haines townsite are right and worthy goals. How best to achieve those goals is the issue before the Haines Borough Assembly. The borough administration has proposed a major restructuring of local garbage service, including a 1 percent hike in sales tax and borough participation in waste management, in order to eliminate the…
Some people in Haines are ask me why I’m running for the Legislature when there is still so much to be done on the Haines Borough Assembly. Believe me, I’d rather keep my focus on Haines. The problem is that some of the biggest issues we deal with in Haines — and on the Haines Assembly — are responding to…
On Tuesday, April 10, 2018, we assembly members approved a permit for another new tour along the Chilkoot River. We did this despite concern from the Haines Borough’s own tourism office that the situation between bears and people along the Chilkoot corridor desperately needs to be addressed, as well as similar comments from visitors and current tour permit holders. Lower…
It’s hard to know where to begin to pick up all the pieces following revelations that Karl Ward, one of our town’s most honored citizens, sexually abused young people, perhaps for years. Certainly our town failed to protect some of its most innocent and vulnerable members, who paid a terrible price for our lack of vigilance. That hurts, but it…
The proposed University of Alaska timber sale is so big, so far-reaching and so sudden, a person can’t help but wonder where it came from and why. For about 70 years, the university has held 13,000 acres of forest in the Chilkat Valley, property it received around the time of Alaska statehood to develop or exploit as a source of…
We’re in a bind at the Lutak Dock. Let’s take action now so that we’re never in a bind like this again. Here’s the story. About 50 years ago, the U.S. Army gave Haines the Lutak Dock. The Army had built the earthen embankment dock in the mid-1950s, to build and supply a military tank farm located near the present-day…
Before any more lawsuits between neighbors, the Haines Borough needs to identify and acquire access to popular public beaches and waterways. In the past three years, longtime users of Chilkoot River and Viking Cove have faced off in court against property owners and the results have been disastrous. They’ve been disastrous to residents’ pocketbooks, to neighborhood relationships, and to our…
(There are two federally recognized Indian tribes in the Chilkat Valley, the Chilkat Indian Village and the Chilkoot Indian Association. In much of this essay, I will use the word “tribe” in a more generic sense, to describe a group of people who share common beliefs and common livelihood. In Webster’s New World Dictionary, this is definition number 3 of…